Faceless Killers, Henning Mankell
Amsterdam, Ian McEwan
Planet of Slums, Mike Davis
Giraffe, J.M. Ledgard
The Best American Poetry of 2007
This write-up is past due, and as it creeps further past deadline, I can only guess that I don't really want to write it. Not because the books I read this month were bad. They weren't. They ranged from the really excellent (Giraffe) to the good (Planet of Slums, Faceless Killers) to the grudgingly good (Amsterdam) to the about as good as I expected it to be (The Best American Poetry of 2007). I really have no excuse for balking at this, beyond over-work and holiday malaise. So here goes.
I've already written about J.M. Ledgard's debut novel Giraffe. It was everything I like in a novel - cleanly written, mysterious, elegant, smart, relating the bizarreness of our worlds, internal and external, with the drabness of our worlds. Read it.
Planet of Slums was an onslaught of dispiriting statistics, anecdotes, and analyses of macro-development trends, also very good, if not exactly heartening. A worthwhile look into what will surely be one of the most relevant and emotionally affecting stories of development in the next fifty years.
I picked up Faceless Killers on a whim in Penn Station, needing a good book to read over Thanksgiving. I had no context for Henning Mankell's murder mystery, set in the ice-blue winter of southern Sweden, and purchased the book solely on the strength of its appealing cover design, dust jacket accolades, and the desire for a wintry murder mystery. Faceless Killers was good in exactly the way murder mysteries are good. It managed to create suspense and an internal propulsion and gravity, from nothing in particular, other than brutal and senseless acts of violence, half-presented and unaccountable facts, speculation, an ensemble of odd, reticent characters, and the anxiety of the movement inherent in solving a mystery (or so I gather). The cold Swedish winter and the political color added by Europe's growing xenophobia in the face of an influx of immigrants and refugees added some, if not significant, texture to the novel. A more than worthwhile travel read.
I liken Ian McEwan's novels to M. Night Shyamalan's movies (I was going to suggest Spielberg, but I would be selling Spielberg short) -- accomplished, displaying an absolute mastery of form, engaging from start to finish, marvelous in construction, but more than a little contrived, and leaving me without a clear sense of purpose, at novel's end. So with Amsterdam. I can't dis-recommend the novel. It was good, generally interesting. It's necessary trope, at the novel's climax, was more than a little forced, and other than painting touches of the general anxiety of aging and nodding its head at the machinations of modern political intrigue, I'm not entirely sure what was holding the center of the novel. Probably nothing.
In this season of Best Ofs, well, you get a good sense of their worth. Compendiums for the uninitiated. Something to thumb through for those with a sense for what they like. So with The Best American Poetry of 2007. Not entirely clear why this is a recommended purchase over simply picking up a literary quarterly, but, hey, it wasn't bad, either.
Amsterdam, Ian McEwan
Planet of Slums, Mike Davis
Giraffe, J.M. Ledgard
The Best American Poetry of 2007
This write-up is past due, and as it creeps further past deadline, I can only guess that I don't really want to write it. Not because the books I read this month were bad. They weren't. They ranged from the really excellent (Giraffe) to the good (Planet of Slums, Faceless Killers) to the grudgingly good (Amsterdam) to the about as good as I expected it to be (The Best American Poetry of 2007). I really have no excuse for balking at this, beyond over-work and holiday malaise. So here goes.
I've already written about J.M. Ledgard's debut novel Giraffe. It was everything I like in a novel - cleanly written, mysterious, elegant, smart, relating the bizarreness of our worlds, internal and external, with the drabness of our worlds. Read it.
Planet of Slums was an onslaught of dispiriting statistics, anecdotes, and analyses of macro-development trends, also very good, if not exactly heartening. A worthwhile look into what will surely be one of the most relevant and emotionally affecting stories of development in the next fifty years.
I picked up Faceless Killers on a whim in Penn Station, needing a good book to read over Thanksgiving. I had no context for Henning Mankell's murder mystery, set in the ice-blue winter of southern Sweden, and purchased the book solely on the strength of its appealing cover design, dust jacket accolades, and the desire for a wintry murder mystery. Faceless Killers was good in exactly the way murder mysteries are good. It managed to create suspense and an internal propulsion and gravity, from nothing in particular, other than brutal and senseless acts of violence, half-presented and unaccountable facts, speculation, an ensemble of odd, reticent characters, and the anxiety of the movement inherent in solving a mystery (or so I gather). The cold Swedish winter and the political color added by Europe's growing xenophobia in the face of an influx of immigrants and refugees added some, if not significant, texture to the novel. A more than worthwhile travel read.
I liken Ian McEwan's novels to M. Night Shyamalan's movies (I was going to suggest Spielberg, but I would be selling Spielberg short) -- accomplished, displaying an absolute mastery of form, engaging from start to finish, marvelous in construction, but more than a little contrived, and leaving me without a clear sense of purpose, at novel's end. So with Amsterdam. I can't dis-recommend the novel. It was good, generally interesting. It's necessary trope, at the novel's climax, was more than a little forced, and other than painting touches of the general anxiety of aging and nodding its head at the machinations of modern political intrigue, I'm not entirely sure what was holding the center of the novel. Probably nothing.
In this season of Best Ofs, well, you get a good sense of their worth. Compendiums for the uninitiated. Something to thumb through for those with a sense for what they like. So with The Best American Poetry of 2007. Not entirely clear why this is a recommended purchase over simply picking up a literary quarterly, but, hey, it wasn't bad, either.
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